House of Zin-Shalla
The House of Shadowglory is an ancient Quel'dorei house, dating back thousands of years before the Sundering, though its ascension to the inner circles of the peerage was only a recent affair when the Highborne Empire fell. During the entirety of its reign, it was headed by Elos Astarion Zin-Shalla, a warlord who acquired the epithet "the Butcher" for his brutal treatment of his own people. Its few surviving scions only speak the name of this fallen house to inspire fear and loathing in their enemies, for there is no honor to be found in it. History The Zin-Shalla line emerged from the military caste of the Kaldorei, serving as battle-mages and knights in the service of the Highborne elite. The heads of this house were known to be charismatic and ruthless; this was particularly so for Elos Nuremor Zin-Shalla, a powerful eldritch knight formerly in service to the powerful Prince of Azsuna. Nuremor gathered around him an increasingly large and powerful warband, composed primarily of ambitious members of the military caste but with several lowborn followers as well, and began contracting himself out as a mercenary army to the local powers, namely the Mogu Empire. With the wealth he accumulated over the centuries, Nuremor was able to claw his way into the lowest echelon of the Highborne peerage, securing for himself a small estate called An'dalathar (the Father's Seat) at the southwesternmost reaches of the Empire. Once his new fiefdom was secure and well-funded, his two children proceeded to have Nuremor assassinated, removing the mercenary stain to their newly-elevated name and handing the lordship to Nuremor's firstborn son, Elos Astarion Zin-Shalla. Astarion and his sister, Elar Sylvenasi, set about reforging the family name into one deserving not only of the wealth their father had acquired but the respect of Highborne society. Of course, without the influx of money from Nuremor's mercenary endeavours, this was easier said than done. Refusing to submit to the shame of returning to another lord's service - and certainly not mercenary service - Astarion instead gathered as many of his father's former retainers who would follow him and pledged their service directly to the Crown. They were quickly dispatched to the Empire's northern border, where raids by the Vrykul and northern troll tribes were becoming increasingly common. It was not an opportunity for glory, but it supported the estate without dragging the Zin-Shalla name further through the muck. It was, however, fortuitous for Astarion that this was the duty he had, for it was under his watch that the great migration of proto-humans began, with thousands upon thousands fleeing the dominion of King Ymiron. These desperate refugees, while warriors, were typically half-starved when they arrived on the Empire's borders, and more often than not an offered scrap of bread would bend more knees than blades. Over the next few years, Astarion collected thousands of these refugees, who would become known as Lyuu'dorei, and when he could no longer support any more, he led them in a forced march back to An'dalathar. Here he set them to work as slave laborers, working the fields and mines of his estate, rapidly and monumentally increasing his income; this rapid rise, of course, intrigued other nearby nobles, to whom Astarion would sell spare Lyuu'dorei, or more often, offer them as gifts in exchange for favors. Slowly but surely, Astarion laid the groundwork to become a figure of note within the peerage, ultimately being given the title of Prince of An'dalathar. Just as they were his rise, however, the Lyuu'dorei would be Astarion's fall, and the failure of House Zin-Shalla. As his position grew increasingly secure and lucrative in the capital, Astarion spent more and more time in Zin-Azshari as a courtier to Queen Azshara, attempting to seduce the Highborne empress whom he loved so desperately, leaving An'dalathar in the care of his sister Sylvenasi. When Azshara began preparations to summon the Burning Legion and the lower castes rose in revolt, Astarion was quick to offer the services of his principality in the Queen's defense. In order to bolster his rather lackluster numbers, however, Astarion turned to arming his Lyuu'dorei slaves, forming armies that had four or even five Lyuu'dorei for every Quel'dorei. He handed this armies off to his retainers to lead and returned to his Queen's side with his personal honor guard, eager to demonstrate his worth to her firsthand. It was not long into the war that a Lyuu'dorei warrior called Sakura had begun a revolt that led to the deaths of several of Astarion's retainers and the loss of vast swaths of his home territory. Sylvenasi did her utmost to contain the rebellion, marshaling her powerful mastery of illusion to trick entire settlements' worth of Lyuu'dorei that Sakura's revolt was, in fact, an enemy army. However, Sylvenasi was by no means omniscient, and she could not predict the movements of the numerous Lyuu'dorei runners and infiltrators under Sakura's banner. At last Sylvenasi was forced to withdraw back to An'dalathar, where she resisted a Lyuu'dorei siege for over a month before her Lyuu'dorei defenders became aware of her deception and sacked the city. Terrified of what punishment awaited her if she was captured by the revolutionaries, Sylvenasi drank the entirety of a bottle of fine Azshari arcwine on the balcony of the city's central spire before casting herself over the railing. With Sylvenasi's death, the Principality of An'dalathar was no longer under Zin-Shalla control. By this point, Astarion had developed a reputation for brutality amongst the Kaldorei Resistance; he never took prisoners, and gave little thought to noncombatants caught in the crossfire. It was when the war started to turn against the Highborne, and he began to stray farther and farther from the battlefront, simply pillaging and massacring lowborn villages and druidic conclaves to prove his prowess to Azshara, that he acquired the epithet "the Butcher." To the very end, it is said that he believed in Azshara's cause, beyond all reason. Being on the borders of the Empire, he survived the Sundering, only to surrender himself to the very druidic conclaves he had committed his last months to destroying. It is said that, as punishment for his crimes, the druids grew a tree through the Highborne warlord's body, a tree that has stood ever since, feeding off the potent magical energy Zin-Shalla left behind. Legacy By this point, the primary line of Zin-Shalla had died out, as both Sylvenasi and Astarion died childless, and most of the extended family were never seen after the Sundering. As far as can be told, Nuremor's younger brother Elos Mithandrys Zin-Shalla and his daughter Elar Bellator are the only two confirmed to have survived, both having relocated to the northern city of Shandaral, surviving off the crystallized mana left behind by the Blue Dragonflight. Mithandrys was killed in the magisters' desperate attempt to defend Shandaral from the Dragonflight, while Bellator largely faded from history, though she has been sighted since the opening of the Dark Portal and is believed to still be alive. Members The noble house of Zin-Shalla was always small, as it gained and lost its peerage within two generations. This situation was not helped by the numerous egomaniacal personalities contained within the House. Elos Astarion, the patriarch of the House after his father Nuremar's death, refused to marry due to his infatuation with Queen Azshara, and died without fathering a legitimate heir. By the time she had reached marrying age, his younger sister Elar Sylvenasi had developed a reputation for escapades with other women, including a very hushed-up tryst with her first cousin Elar Bellator; this, coupled with the still relatively low reputation of their house, made her an impossible bride. Bellator, while not nearly as stained by Sylvenasi's reputation, lacked her cousin's political influence, as the peerage of House Zin-Shalla had only been created in Nuremar, leaving her without an inheritance or title worthy of a Highborne peer's time. Category:Highborne Peerage Category:Houses, Clans and Tribes Category:Destroyed Organizations